User Review

Hang on to your hats folks, we're going to take a little tour of the
PhotoPC 850Z's real camera capabilities here via the onscreen displays
for each operating mode -- and there's a bunch of them!

This is a typical Record mode screen in the fully Automatic Exposure mode.
You have onscreen icons for the recording mode, the number of pictures
remaining / number of pictures total (yes, there's a Microdrive in there),
the flash mode, the focus mode, the metering mode, image quality and EV
override value.

With this menu active you now have button control of manual focus,
metering (matrix or spot), ISO (100, 200, 400) and white balance.
Pressing the Back button takes you back to the previous menu overlays.

Note the little green triangle in the upper left of the LCD, pressing
the button next to that switches you instantly into Playback mode to
review any pictures already taken.

Here we have the screen display when in Shutter Priority mode. You can of
course set the shutter speed value and adjust the EV override value. You
can also cycle the recording mode with the Normal Frame button as we
described above. Pressing the Menu Change button takes you to the same
menu options as above - it works the same in all of the following modes.

And here we have the screen displayed when in aperture Priority mode
where you select the desired aperture setting. All other menu options are
the same as previously described including the Menu Change function.

When in Manual Exposure you can select both the Shutter speed and the
desired Aperture setting.

If you pick any combination of shutter speeds or apertures that is out of
the proper exposure range this is the EV! warning that you will get.

The green circle indicates that the autofocus is locked.

The 850Z can record in timed interval mode and effectively became a
RoboCam that could be used for posting Internet pictures or for some
type of security surveillance. It can be set to take a picture every
10 seconds to 24 hours. After the first picture is taken the camera turns
itself off and comes back on again when it's time to take the next one.

Panorama mode results in the screen frame becoming long and narrow, it
actually nips off a portion of the top and bottom of the frame which is
what happens when you stitch panorama photos together.

Turning the mode dial to the "I" position brings up the Setup menus.
This is the first menu where you can set the time/date, format a memory
card, select the operating language, select a desired recording mode,
enable or disable Quick Shot (uses internal buffer RAM to allow taking a
series of pictures without waiting for them to be processed first), and
enter the Camera Setup menu (next screen).

This is the Camera Setup menu which lets you set the Powersave timer value,
adjust the LCD brightness, set the beeper volume, enable the beep when the
shutter release is pressed and enable the voice recording feature.

This is a typical Playback image. To zoom in you press the button next
to the "enlargement" label. Pressing the Multi button brings up the
thumbnail display mode. Images may be Deleted in any playback mode
except for the zoomed mode.

Once you have "zoomed in" to the picture you can use four of the buttons
around the LCD to move up and down and left and right.

This is the thumbnail display mode, from here you quickly go through your
stored images and select one to be displayed fullscreen.

Steve's Conclusion

The PhotoPC 850Z is a very capable 2-megapixel camera with lots of manual
controls. The overall image quality; color balance, saturation, focus and
noise considered, puts it right up there with other 2-megapixel cameras
costing hundreds of dollars more. The images aren't as sharp as the Nikon
950 or as saturated as Kodak DC290 but they are as good as the rest of the
2MPixel cameras. When shooting indoors in full wideangle mode I was
surprised by how often the flash didn't go off, yet the pictures
came out just fine.

I like the look and feel of this camera. It's roughly the same size and
shape as most 35mm cameras and feels really solid in your hand thanks to
an over-sized handgrip. The camera appears to have a metal body but it is
really high-impact plastic in that familiar metallic silver color. The
most-used controls are ergonomically located on the top of the camera next
to the data LCD. Here you can change the image quality setting (Epson's
one to three "stars" plus an "H" for the HyPict mode), the flash mode
(auto, redeye, slow-sync [leading or trailing], forced on, off) or enable
the selftimer mode.

The rest of the camera's advanced features (shutter priority, aperture
priority, manual exposure, manual focus) must be accessed through menus on
the color LCD by pressing one of the eight buttons on the back. Only a few
of these buttons are labeled on the camera body as all of them perform
multiple functions depending on which menu is active. Due to the abundance
of options available, the onscreen menu system is really the only way to
access them. If you're indoors or in a well shaded area this won't be a
problem. If you're out in the bright sunlight it is nearly impossible to
see that LCD. Epson claims the SolarAssist LCD is easier to read in the
sunlight, but to be brutally honest, it doesn't help much at all.
I'm sure it does ease the load on the batteries though.

The most annoying thing about the 850Z is its shutter delay which is often a
full second or longer. And this is with the camera already prefocused. This
is going to really annoy those who are trying to grab shots of their little
kids or any fast-moving action subjects. At first I thought it had something
to do with using the flash but I also encountered the delay outdoors in the
bright sunlight. Turns out that this just may be a design problem with the
shutter release button itself. If you actuate it like you're supposed to
then you will probably encounter this shutter lag -- if however you press
the shutter rapidly and firmly there is no more delay than any other
digicam. You do risk blurring pictures at slow shutter speeds but it does
seem to pretty much cure the shutter lag problem.

Another common digicam problem is that you have to cycle
through the Off position to go from Record to Playback mode when you're
not using the LCD. The lens has
to retract and the LCD screen blanks out and then comes back on and etc.
This is an old problem that I thought the engineers would have fixed by now
but it keeps showing up on new cameras. Guess I'm too used to my Nikon 950
and being able to quickly go from M-Rec to Play in just one click of the
mode dial.

Thanks to reader Matt Mercier for pointing out the following to me:

"I have noticed when in record mode, a little [>] in the upper left corner. If you press this it puts
the camera into playback mode.

I had completely overlooked that little feature. It's on the
second menu
screen right up there in the upper lefthand corner of the LCD. You can
press the button and go right from record to play mode and then back again
without turning the main mode dial.

I've noticed that the zoom lens mechanism often works intermittently after
the camera is awakened from sleep mode. I would tap the shutter
button to wake the camera up and wait until the top LCD display was on
again and then tried to run the zoom in or out. Many times it would make a
noise and seem to change a little but would fail to zoom all the way out or
back in until I had moved the zoom lever several times. This same problem
was confirmed by another 850Z user so it isn't just a quirk with my
evaluation camera. If I switched the camera Off and then On again after it
was asleep I did not see any zoom problems.

Using the 850Z with an external hot shoe flash
was like shooting with a film camera. You move the mode
dial to "I" position, press the button for Shot SETUP and set Flash Select
for EXT. Press the BACK button, set the camera for Manual. Turn on the
camera in the Record with LCD mode (red camera icon that has a large red
square in it), press the upper left button unit it says Manual Exposure. In
this mode you manually select both the shutter speed and aperture value. I
used 1/60th-second shutter speed and selected F8 for head-on flash shots or
F5.6 or F4 when I was bouncing the flash off of the ceiling. The Vivitar 285
flash was set in the Auto (blue) position for F8 with ISO 100 speed film.

The Bottom Line

The ergonomic design of the camera is good with the exception of the LCD
screen. I'm no super-techie when it comes to LCD technology but I do know
that there are many different types out there, polysilicon-TFT, HAST and the
new reflective hybrids. This is the second digicam I have evaluated with the
Suncatcher type LCD and neither of them have been very impressive. I tried
the different illumination settings for the LCD but at anything above the
default brightness the screen simply washes out, even indoors. There is a
good optical viewfinder (with diopter adjustment) on the 850Z but you still
need to see the LCD to change the camera's advanced features.

The range of manual controls on the 850Z is wonderful and highly useful for
those of us that don't want our camera doing everything automatically. The
flash hot shoe is a great idea that I wish ALL of the manufacturers would add
to their cameras. Most every 35mm camera has a hot shoe flash so why should
digicams be any different? The initial startup time is about 6-7 seconds as
the lens has to extend while the camera is "booting up."

I liked the QuickShot mode as it allowed you to take a number of shots in
sequence that were buffered into internal memory without having to wait
inbetween shots. But once it did pause to write the image data out to the CF
card it seemed to take a long time and you could do nothing but watch the
green LED blink.

The 850Z works with both CompactFlash Type I and II solid-state cards.
The IBM Microdrive is not totally compatible, the 850Z only sees about
90MB of its capacity and shortens the battery life by about 25-30%.

If you can live with the somewhat poor LCD (outdoors) then this camera
will serve you well - it does take great pictures.
The 850Z's image quality is good to very good with very good being the norm.
If at all possible, see the Epson PhotoPC 850Z in the
store, pick it up, fire off some shots and then make the purchase decision.
Too many consumers make the mistake of buying a camera sight unseen just
because it got glowing reviews or a friend recommended it. You wouldn't buy
a car this way so why should the purchase of an expensive camera be any
different?